


This theory of parallel Earths

by iriswesttt



Category: The Flash (TV 2014)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-01-22
Updated: 2016-01-22
Packaged: 2018-05-15 14:25:59
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 7,642
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5788741
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/iriswesttt/pseuds/iriswesttt
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>This is my take on the look they were sharing on those two seconds on the promo and the spoilers/theories about Earth2</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Posted a little while ago at my tumblr iriswestthings.

She sees him from afar, fidgeting with his cellphone, taking it out and putting it back on his pocket, and his tie undone and his shirt slightly unbutton. She promised she would cook for them and now she hasn’t even bought the groceries yet and it’s way past dinner time so she’s not really surprised he’s there, waiting for her, probably a little mad and upset.

    
Despite of that she smiles at the sight of him, even when she had a crappy day like today and could see an argument on their way, (about the long hours she worked, about how her father butted into their lives too much, about his mother pressuring them about a grandchild, about how he was always late and never remembered to bring the groceries home and how he would always put himself in danger for a stupid story that was not worth his life, or their prodding of each other about how she was jealous of his nightmare of a boss Beee-cky Coooo-pper and he was jealous of Detective Pretty Boy — not that she was to blame he was made her partner —) Barry always, always, without a fail, made her calmer. Just looking at him had that effect on her and from the moment they kissed for the first time, on that fancy hotel room they were sharing for their trip to Coast City with his parents on the summer of 10th grade, she had never ever had any doubts. She never wanted to be one of those people who believed in soul mates, there was no reason behind it, but she failed completely to explain how he made her feel. It was impossible. 

She watches as he rubs the back of his neck and holds his wrist in his hand on his back, trying to control the constant moving energy going through him. She grabs his hand and when he lets go from his wrist and she grabs the other one, and it’s the same hands, the shaky hands that undressed her for the first time when they were 16 and had no idea what they were doing, (even after all the research, and they did a lot of research), the ones she sneakily grabs from his back now, causing him to turn to her in surprise and she gives him a kiss for hello, a slow and wet and greedy one, her hands traveling from his back to the back of his neck as he slowly brings his to her waist, pulling her even closer, a kiss that she hopes will be enough to make him temporarily forget why he has reasons to be mad at her and remind him that none of that really matters at the end of the day because nothing will ever feel like them. 

He kisses her back and the way his lips move and his tongue darts into her mouth so carefully yet desperately, a combination that reminds her of the way he used to kiss her when they were teenagers, is a little different from the kisses they normally share now but his knees give in a little and she can tell, by the way he folds his body into hers just so, that he is in his toes, and she smiles  into his kiss, at her dorky husband, before breaking apart. She kisses the familiar path behind his ear, moving on to his neck and then his jaw line, something she wouldn’t usually do in public but it’s late and there’s almost no one left at the precinct, no one around them anyway, while saying between kisses;  

“Hey, babe. I have to drop some files at the captain’s desk, I’ll be just” — she cuts herself. When she finally looks into his face there’s something quiet not right there. She can’t actually explain what, the way he looks at her perhaps, there’s the silent adoration, and a yearning that is always there, there’s also the yielding and the humble compliance that he usually reserves for when they are really alone, preferably naked, and he’s doing whatever it is she’s asking from him, but that’s not what bothers her in it, it’s the feeling of novelty she is reading in him from their kiss, it’s the way he looks just a little ruined by it, a little scared and sad and taken apart. 

He tries to look away from her, she can sense him trying to focus his eyes on something other than her, they way he does when he’s about to lie to her, but she grabs him by the chin before he succeeds, studying his face, turning it just a little, his lips slightly part, moving like he wants to say something, as the realisation dawns on her and she says, more to herself than to anyone else; “You’re not Barry.”

“Iris, what? I…” — he starts mumbling his response and it is a lot like Barry but it’s not him, not  _hers_  somehow, and she gets her confirmation when under her stern gaze he finishes; “how — how do you know?”

She doesn’t bother answering. She just kissed someone who is not her husband and he let her, he doesn’t deserve the consideration that an answer would give, so she asks;

“How can you look like him?”

“I — It’s a long story. I’m Barry, I’m just not, well …”

“ _My_  Barry?”

“Yeah.”

“How…” — that’s not what’s important, she has to focus on the important part; “Where is he?”

“I’m not so sure, I mean, I think he’s lost, I don’t know where, that’s what lost implys. That’s the thing, I — can we go somewhere more, private?”

She notices she was still holding his chin, he doesn’t seem bother by it though. She lets go nonetheless.

“Are you kidding me? You show up at my work, and you look like my husband and you let me kiss you and I don’t know you, for all I know you could be some crazy person taking his identity!” 

She breaths in trying to calm herself down, yelling looks like a pretty bad idea right about now and she can hear her voice rising.

“Iris.”

And there’s something in the way he says it, just like her Barry, like it is a complete phrase, like he can pick and twist the word, making it mean whatever he wants it to. Like every time he says it, whichever way he means it, some weight lifts off his shoulder, like it is a relief to just repeat  _Iris, Iris, Iris_ , and he can breath in a way he couldn’t with the word stuck on his throat, suffocating him.

“Iris, please? You can trust me. I know you can feel that. Please?”

She breaths in. This is crazy. And then she remembers Barry trying to explain this theory of parallel Earths, she can hear him excitedly babbling to her about how everything in our universe is made of combinations of carbon and the possibility of those combinations is finite, and the universe, however is infinitely big and expanding, so the conclusion that the earth and ourselves repeat itself, in identical situations and also on slightly different situations, is a logical one, and she can see him on their bed that Sunday afternoon gesturing big with his hands while he talked and she now regrets questioning him if he really rather keep on his monologue about some science fiction theory when she had put on her lilac lace bra just so he could take it off of her, and he had kissed her, through said bra, nipping on her nipple and then grabbed her boobs under it before actually taking it off all the while he whined about how it wasn’t fiction, it was science and how he was sure that every version of him was in love with their respective version of her, cause how could they not? No Barry would be immune to her. Much less when she was wearing that bra.

She has a lot of serious questions about that now. This Barry in front of her, maybe he’s another Barry, in a different Earth, maybe he’s in love with his Iris, but maybe her believing in that will actually be a problem for her because she can’t control her instinct of trusting Barry, even if it’s not her Barry and this Barry has already noticed that, but she also certainly won’t be able to prove to anyone that this is not her husband. Besides he’s the only link she can think of to her Barry, finding him and bringing him back to her cause she certainly doesn’t plan on living her life without him, so she complies;  

“Ok, we can go to the roof.”

She pulls him to the elevator as he mumbles;

“Good, yeah, the roof is good.”


	2. Chapter 2

“Iris!”

It has been the weirdest 30 seconds of his life. One moment he could swear he was leaving CCPN and then he blinks and he opens his eyes again and he’s standing at the exact same spot in front of the building except he’s facing another direction and everything looks just slightly out of place. He goes back inside trying to make sense of it and his wife is sitting on his table at the newsroom but his table doesn’t look like his table and he doesn’t really recognise the people around but seeing her gets him a little more grounded, it always does (something ironic considering how she’s always surprising him and keeping him on his toes, but he gave up logic regarding how Iris makes him feel a long time ago).

  
She walks towards him with a quizzical look on her face and her hair is down and her dress is really tight  and he doesn’t remember ever seeing her in it but there’s no questioning, it’s Iris. She knits her eyebrows together the closer she gets and there’s something wrong. The way she studies his face makes him feel like it’s not the world that turned upside-down, but him. She stops on her tracks right in front of him and as he steps forwards and bends for a kiss she gives a step back, which from all the weird stuff he has happening in this moment having Iris step out of his reach is definitively the weirdest, but he shakes his head trying to focus on what she’s asking him;

“Bear, what are you doing here? You just left for Earth 2, what happened?”

It sounds like her, the way she says it, her intonation and the way she brushes her hair behind her ear, it’s all Iris, but the sentences don’t make any sense, neither does her arms protectively crossed in front of her; something he’s seen her doing to her dad whenever he’s questioning her position on something relating to an investigation, and to his mom whenever she starts to talk about babies, but having her acting like that regarding him is what’s scaring him the most at the moment, so much so that all he manages to asks is;

“What?”  

She lets her arms fall down and he reaches for her hand. He needs to make sure she’s not some kind of hallucination in front of him, he’s feeling like he was dropped in Wonderland and the Cheshire Cat forgot to pay him a visit to ask him where he wants to go. But as soon as he tells Iris what’s happening the rest of the world will follow into place so he’s washed by a momentary relief when she lets him hold her hand only to question it again by the way she looks thrown off at their fingers intertwined, like it’s new, like this is something he never does, have never done. Her eyes travel back to his face slowly, studying him and she asks;

“Are you ok? What’s wrong?”

“I don’t know. It’s like one second everything is fine and the next I’m standing on this slightly out of place…” 

The words die on his lips. He can see the same realisation dawning on both of them: he’s not on  _his_  world. This is not his Iris but he can read her just the same, her eyes wide and she looks around formulating their scape route and placing her hand on his arm she pulls him with her so they are standing outside on january weather and the cold is the only thing holding him together.  

It means the theory was right! Which he’s about to rub on her face! Science fiction my ass! Granted, that bra is great and doing things to her in that bra is awesome and maybe he did pick a not so good time to try and explain it to her but he was right in believing in it, there are other Earths! Not so impossible now! There are other Barrys and Irises and —  
“I told you, I told you and you kept saying” — And he isn’t fully capable of wrapping his head around it yet but right now  _he is_  on another earth. This isn’t his Iris. — “Except it wasn’t you, was it?” — Iris is rubbing her arms, trying to stay warm under the ridiculously light coat she has over her tight dress and he feels dizzy under the sight of it. His stomach twists and turns and he’s pretty sure his heart is trying to fly off of his chest and his lungs seem to have stopped working so he lets her know;

“I can’t breath. I think I’m having a heart attack.”

“No, you’re not, you’re having a panic attack, come on.”

She sits him down on the bench in front of CCPN’s building and kneels down in front of him, seemingly not minding the snow on the ground where she rests her knees, and he has never in his whole life been surer that he is going to die. Or maybe he’s dead, which is why he can’t seem to breath anymore. Iris places both of her hands on his arms, rubbing it against his coat, and even if they’re over it he feels his skin warming as she instructs him;

“Barry, look at me. Barry!”

And he does. And it’s not his wife he’s looking at, but she brushes his hair off his forehead just the same and he looks her in the eye as she says;

“It’s ok, it’s all right, you just have to breath with me, can you do that? Focus on my breathing.”

“I can’t”

“Yes, you can, come on Barry, just breath with me.”

He calms down when for a moment he’s able to concentrate on her breathing, he’s not sure how long it takes but the minute he does he sees a smile spreading on Iris’ lips and it’s the same smile his Iris has for him, open and vulnerable in a way she doesn’t allow herself to be with anyone else, and he can’t help but to smile back. And she seems the one to breath in as she sits by his side.

“How did you know I was having a panic attack?”

“Barry used to have those when we were kids. You had the exact same look on your face. If you still feel dizzy you should put your head between your knees.”

So he does, and her hands travel calmingly up and down his spine until he straightens back up.

“So, you are not from this Earth.”

“You make me sound like an alien.”

“Well, technically…” 

And she bends her head as to say  _sorry_ and laughs, and it has the same effect that his wife’s laugh has on him and he wants to kiss the bridge of her nose and hug her warm but instead he rubs his hand on the back of his neck. There’s so much going through his mind and he needs Iris, his Iris, he needs to touch her and hold her hand, but she’s in another earth and thinking about it will only lead to a nervous breakdown, so he tentatively reaches for this Iris’ hand and she jumps out of his touch, out of the bench and he wonders vaguely what has her Barry done for her to react like this.  

She offers her hand to him though, introducing herself as if they are strangers, which they are, but still;

“Iris West, nice to meet you.”

“Barry Allen.”

He laughs at the craziness of it. And then she’s laughing too. He doesn’t know her. He’s never seen her in his life yet she smells just the same as his Iris and he can read her cues and predict the way she brushes her hair behind her left ear and then he notices there isn’t a ring on her finger.

“You’re not…” — it doesn’t really matter, he tells himself, he has to focus on finding out what she knows and how he can get back home — “You don’t seem at all surprise there’s another Earth out there.”

“Stranger things have happened.”

She smiles at him, a little sad and a little broken but he can see it’s not about him. She anticipates the questions on his lips as she says;

“I think we should find a better place to talk. I just need to get my coat — Are you feeling like coffee? Cause I know the perfect rooftop.”


	3. Chapter 3

There was something off putting about having a different Barry around her new apartment all the time. Before she even had a real chance to have her Barry there for more than twenty minutes time. 

He had helped her move, of course, that had taken more than twenty minutes but it didn’t really count. He was busy during then, painting, hanging her posters on the wall, putting the furniture together: somethings she kept from Eddie’s old place (since his mom had told her she wanted nothing of it), somethings she had picked new, cause it felt like she needed that. New bed, so she could let go of him, not turn in her sleep and feel him missing. New sofa too, so she could look around her living room without thinking of him every time, about how that was the sofa he had picked for his place when they weren’t even dating yet, but she went with him to buy it anyway, it was the first time she had laughed after Barry’s accident, which after the singularity, for a while there, was enough to send her to tears.  

At the same time she liked that it was his, or rather  _theirs,_  coffee table (the one with the twin cup ring marks from the incredibly hot summer day she had spend on his boxers and his t-shirt, drinking spiked lemonade and playing charade with him), the one sitting in the middle of her room. That was a good memory and something nice to think of when she was dusting it off, but not so big and overwhelming like sleeping on the mattress they used to share.

Barry — not-her-Barry-Barry — looks around intently, studying everything, studying her, her in her place, and the place itself, and she feels watched in a way her-Barry never left her feeling. Her-Barry would never just look at her so openly but this Barry puts no filter to it, it’s not that he’s less shy, he’s probably a little more shy even, he reserves the never ending energy he has in common with her Barry to when there’s no one around, and maybe it’s just the situation, but he has been indescribably awkward (not just knocking-over-door-frames but unable-to-finish-a-sentence-in-a-coherent-manner awkward) with everyone he met, from Cisco and Caitlin to her dad and Wally (that took a lot of explaining that couldn’t suffice since she couldn’t understand it fully herself yet), but with her he has been completely open. She figures being married to Iris, well, his version of Iris, made her someone he was instinctually comfortable with. He would spend all the time around the apartment bare foot, he would eat her food and cook for her and fix her shower head and beg her to proof read all of her articles and help her with her investigations saying he was going crazy without having something to do. She got him all for herself and it had been only one week but she was selfishly enjoying it.

She was actually scarily enjoying having him around. He was Barry, he talked with his hands, and nerded out on whatever was exciting him at the moment, and he even smelled like Barry, but at the same time it wasn’t Barry. She missed her Barry, the way he would smile slightly different, and  rub the back of his neck slightly different, and hold her hand like rubbing her knuckles was something holy, but simultaneously this Barry was like having a new friend that she got along with just like her Barry but without the pressure and all the heavy unspoken things that seemed to weight on them those days, someone she could tell all about her life and trust his opinion on things without having to actually tell them to Barry. So when she sees the text Cisco sends her saying  _We figured a way. Come over with not-Barry_ — she feels a pang of sadness she wasn’t expecting to. Especially cause he chooses that moment to show up at her kitchen, bare feet, wearing a t-shirt and sweat pants, rubbing his eyes and looking warm and comfortably like he just woke up, like he belonged there, and she doesn’t want him to go.

“Hi”, she smiles, getting a bright one in return. He looked at her in a way that made it seems like seeing her was all he needed to feel happy. 

She had spend months thinking she was imagining how the way Barry, her-Barry, looked at her had changed, and now this Barry would look at her exactly how she remembered being looked at and it made her miss her Barry in a way that she knew that just having him back wouldn’t solve. It made her realise how much of their easiness they’d lost, and ache with how much she wanted that back. 

“Morning”, he answers her in a voice full of sleep that suddenly reminds her of the one time when they were on 11th grade and Barry woke up too late to have his coffee for a change and she was in a bad mood and threatened to leave him without a ride if he wasn’t through the door in 5 minutes and she ended up having to drive back to the house cause she noticed half way to the school that he had forgotten his bag and his coat and shoes. When they arrived back he had looked her with a puzzled look and asked with that same voice; “What did you forget?”.

“Cisco just send me a text, they think they can send you back.”

“Oh — oh, ok, how?”

“I’m not so sure, we can find out when we get there. We can leave as soon as you’re ready.” She says offering him a cup of coffee which he takes, studies for a minute and then decides not to drink saying;

“I feel like I have to take a test that I didn’t study for.”

“So a little sick and antsy?”

His breath indicates he’s about ready to have another panic attack so she holds his hand and when he faces her she tells him;

“I promise you, it will be fine. You will be fine.”

He nods in a completely unconvincing manner and turns his palm to hers, interlacing their fingers. The day he had showed up at CCPN, the second he had done that she knew it wasn’t her Barry. At first she had thought (ok, maybe hoped) he was from the future, but the way he looked around like all of their surroundings were unfamiliar to him was too big of a clue for her to ignore.  

Learning they were married in another world, and the way Barry (this Barry) had told her about how the finite possibilities of carbon combination when faced with the infinite universe made the possibilities of other earths where other Barrys and Irises existed, — the way that with this Barry being here it all became more than a sketch on Stein’s glass board, it became real, all of those others selves became real —, it made her imagine all those lives, real lives, obsessively for the past week. 

Sometimes she couldn’t sleep thinking about it, thinking what if there’s an Iris somewhere who never met her Barry, surely she couldn’t just live, just go on with her life without a nagging feeling that something important was missing, surely she had to find him somehow.

Barry, not-her-Barry-Barry, had been so confused by the fact that she and her Barry weren’t married, or even together (just friends she had told him about five times before he actually believed it), that she had lost air laughing at his baffled face, but her heart did break a little by the way he told her;

“I’ve always believed that Iris is my soul mate. It’s always felt like… I don’t know… I can’t live without her, which sounds like something a teenager who just read Romeo and Juliet for the first time would say about their month old relationship, but I don’t mean that dramatically, it’s not science, but it’s just as much as a fact as if it was to me.”

It had broken her heart so much so because, even if her and Barry weren’t together, had never been exactly like that, that was how she felt those nine months, like she couldn’t loose him, couldn’t breath again if she did. It wasn’t science, scientifically she could loose him, he could have died at any moment, she saw him dying and his heart stoping several times, but she honest to god couldn’t grasp in any way or form how she could go on living if he wouldn’t and sometimes she resented that. She hated that she needed him so much. Still does need.

So now, with her fingers enlaced with another Barry, and the ever so real possibility she’ll loose her Barry sooner or later, after all, heroes were never indestructible, heroes died, and his insistence of saving the world was exasperatingly deadly and why she loved him at the same time, because she knew he had always been that hero, just didn’t had any powers before, kinda like this Barry, so looking at their hands fitting together she just leans into him and gives him a kiss. She could never explain completely why, only that she needed to, so she could go on breathing.

She feels his shock in the way he suddenly holds his breath in, freezing his whole body. It’s surprising to her so it must certainly be a surprise to him, especially after her spending the whole time he had been there jumping out of his touch, persistently unsettled by it, by the way he so openly reached for her, a constant reminder that he wasn’t hers. Her Barry (unless he was trying to comfort her or exceptionally in need of comfort himself) would never just reach for her as an instinct, or if he did felt the need he had had it under control for all his life.

But she wants to know how it would feel like. How Barry — any Barry — tastes like. How it feels to have his lips moving against hers, delicately, like she could break under pressure, his mouth open for her, his breath warm pricking her skin, his hands on her cheeks like she could just slip away. When she does pull away his eyes linger closed for a while and when he opens them he asks;

“What was that for?”

“I wanted a proper goodbye.”

It’s only when he wipes the tears from her cheeks that she notices she was crying into it. He captures her bottom lip between his quickly, softly, and asks;

“Do you think that count as cheating?”

She laughs at the absurdity of it all. Of the realisation that she probably does love every version of Barry scattered around the never ending universe.

“I’m not so sure.”

”Well, you kiss differently but you do taste the same.”

“I think your Iris and my Barry probably don’t need to know about it.”

(She’ll tell Barry though, on a naked saturday, not too far on the future, when he’ll tell her guiltily about the kiss he whipped from existence, grieving for something that could have been, and about the kiss this Barry’s Iris gave him, and she’ll tell him not to worry, after all her first kiss with him wasn’t really with him, because if it had been it would have been too easy and then it wouldn’t be them.)

“I won’t tell if you won’t.”

She giggles at that, probably more because of the endorphins and the oxytocin running through her veins than from the way he says it, but it’s still cute.

“Deal.”

He gives her a little chaste kiss and tells her;

“After you jump it doesn’t feel like falling — I mean — it does a little, but only the fun part of it, the butterflies on the stomach, the electricity of excitement, never the hitting the ground part of it —” She doesn’t dare breath. She just waits for him to finish “— when he comes back I think you should jump.” And she manages a little  _okay_.


	4. Chapter 4

Iris,  _his Iris_. And his vision seems to focus again and everything makes a little more sense. 

It’s not that he didn’t like the other Iris. He did. He very probably loved her too but he was trying very hard not to dwell on it. She was Iris nonetheless, and it had taken him a while to wear her down but once he did, once he convinced her he was trying to help and bring her husband back to her, and she trusted him, she became a lot like his Iris, sweet and kind and stubborn and brave and carried herself around way taller than her 5’4’’ with the non-nonsense attitude they shared.

    
But he couldn’t help but to catalogue the differences, her clothes, the way she acted around her Joe (the fact that she refused to let him know that Barry wasn’t really Barry and made him sit through a very scary diner that made him so grateful for the Joe he had), the scarcely smiles (while his Iris seemed sometimes to be made of nothing but smiles), the way she would watch him, while he was having coffee, or eating, or pacing around impatiently, the way she just walked into the bathroom while he was showering on the morning after his second night to let him know what she had on her agenda and that he could cook tonight, laughing at the way he stumbled into the shower tiles in his haste to shy away from her gaze;

“Oh, please! I know every mole of your body, including the ones that make a shape like Orion on your left butt cheek.”

He turned to check — he had never noticed Orion there — and she said;

“Don’t worry, they’re there. Your Iris will like that. I know I do.”

She felt less than inclined to return the favour though, saying that if the next time he visited he had seen his Iris naked then she wouldn’t mind, till then,  _solidarity sister!_  She was not about to give him access to someone else’s body.   
It was nice, for once, to be around an Iris that seemed to want him so openly, that would travel her eyes through him appreciatively, but at the same time she was a constant reminder of his mistakes, and of what he didn’t have, could have had if he hadn’t coward into his fears.

Now his Iris leaves before he even has a chance to say hello though. He’s engulfed by everyone else’s worries and greetings and she gives him a smile, and it’s a small one but it seems genuine, his insides do a somersault at the sight of it and everything, but she just turns around and leaves the room. No one else seem to notice, not even Joe, who is too busy checking if he’s got all his toes and fingers in place. He excuses himself from the huddle, of the people who care about him, that probably missed him, in a high to have him back, and he knows it’s selfish to think it means less because Iris isn’t there anymore but he can’t help it.  

In the hurry to reach her he bumps into Wally in one of the corridors. He takes a look at him, still half in his suit, and says;

“I missed it then, you two switched back. Well, that’s a bummer.”

“Bummer?”

“I like other Barry better. I mean, you share the same skinny white ass but that’s about it.” He tells him with a big smile that so infuriatingly has something of Iris in it and all Barry can say in response is;

“Right.”

And if he’s being completely honest that has been his fear in coming back, hasn’t it? Not that Wally would like other Barry better. That Iris would. The other Iris told him that her Barry was a lot like him, except for the fact that he was more confident and seemed less like a boy than he did. And that she could gladly tell him he had no powers cause she didn’t need him trying and being more of hero than he already did. 

The one little snagging comment from Wally is enough though. Enough to make him question the look Iris gave him, the real reason for the tears in her eyes and even her smile. 

In his time on another earth, on that seemingly endless week, he had noticed that smiles are not a very reproducible thing. His Iris’ smile was just hers, he was sure no other Iris would share it, cause it wasn’t just about the way her lips moved or her eye crinkled, it wasn’t even about how it was more frequent and how she always seemed to mean it more, it was about how the world shined all around it. It was about how it made you believe in anything and everything. Even in the impossible. Even that it would be fine after he lost his mom, that he would be happy again, feel at home again.

He takes a deep breath and Wally rolls his eyes so big that for a second he believes it’ll stuck on the wrong position (ok, maybe it’s just a little bit of wishful thinking and not actual believe). Obviously he found Barry exasperating and even if Barry was trying really hard not to give into it (for Iris, and for Joe, but mainly for Iris) the feeling was mutual.

“You know, for a fast guy you’re very slow.” Wally lets him know. “And very, very stupid. An idiot really. And she deserves way better than you, I thought you should know that, in case you’ve got everyone licking your wounds and no one’s ever told you.” 

And then Wally groans at his lack of reaction and rolls his eyes again but tells him;

“She was heading to the parking lot. Not everyone can just speed out of here.”  

He speeds out of there, to find her already leaving the visitors lounge of STAR Labs.

“Iris.”

“Hey.”

“What — Why are you leaving?”

“Well, I got to see you and you’re all right and you had your hands full with everyone else, so…”

She doesn’t face him, looks everywhere else but his eyes and he’s never seen her behaving like this. His mind start to conjure the worst kind of thoughts and he tries to shake them off, has to shake them off. Wally was only taunting him, Iris wouldn’t want another Barry instead of him.

“Iris.”

“I’m sorry, I’m glad you’re back, I really am, but I have stuff at the paper and I have to go.”

She turns around to leave and he puts himself in front of her, bending his knees a little so their eyes are on the same level and she is forced to look at him. He wants to hold her in place, stop her from leaving, from running, but that will have to do instead.

“Iris. What’s going on?”

He reaches for her hand and she jumps out of his touch, but it’s the look on her face that hurts him the most. The scared and sorrowed look on her face, and the fact that he seems to be the one causing it.

“Iris, what’s wrong? You know you can tell me, right?”

“Uhn, I thought I could, but I can’t.”

She turns so he’s facing her back. He doesn’t follow this time, only takes a step closer, slowly, and she lets him. And he’s close enough to feel the warmth of her body and the smell of her shampoo, of her perfume, of home. He takes a deep breath and watches how when he exhales it tickles her hair out of place slightly, before asking;

“What are you talking about?”

She doesn’t move so he doesn’t dare to either,  _if I move this could die,_ and just standing with her sometimes, like now, is enough, like there’s nothing left to say. That’s not true though, all they have between them those days seems to be unsaid things and he knows it, this feeling, the perfect feeling like there’s an electric current closing between them, can’t last, but she’s the one to finally move, facing him and there’s tears in her deep warm brown eyes, and they’ve always looked more golden when she’d cried, she swallows the tears and tries to explain;

“I thought I could do this, I told Barry I would, but I can’t. I can’t. It’s too much, it’s already too much and if we turn into something more than it is and I loose you — I can’t do this, I can’t — I can’t loose you.”

He’s not brave enough to believe it means what he wants it to mean. He was tricked so many times into thinking she was saying this or about to say it, without her meaning any of it and the only time she did he had ruined it — he can’t take it if it’s not true, he can’t face the disappointment of believing in it so he doesn’t. He makes himself not to. She’s waiting for some kind of answer, some indication he understood what she’s telling him but all he manages is;

“Iris.”

She shakes her head the way she does when she thinks he’s being purposely obtuse, and he can see her trying to steady herself before she starts again;

“When you were in a coma I felt like I was drowning all the time. I would wake up in the middle of the night cause I couldn’t breath, I physically couldn’t breath, and Eddie — he made it better. I loved him for it. I loved him. I couldn’t leave him, I couldn’t just leave after what he had done.”  

“I believe you, Iris, and I’m sorry, sorry I — that you had to go through it, I’m sorry you lost him, I really am, I understand.”

Her stubborn tears (well, they shared something in common with their owner) fall down copiously now, and he wants so much to reach for her, brush them away, hug it better, kiss her salty cheeks and her perfect lips. He stands there and listens instead;

“I wish you would have told me when we were 15 and we could have been, I don’t know,  _something_ …”— his heart twists at the sound of that. That’s not imagination, right? There’s no way she could have meant that any other way, and suddenly he can’t breath. He has to keep repeating to himself _this is real, this is real, it’s Iris, it’s my Iris_ as she finishes — “But Eddie asked me to move in and that’s when you decide to tell me, and I — it felt like it, I, wasn’t enough, like I didn’t love him enough and it wasn’t fair.”

“I know, I know it wasn’t fair, I’m sorry I put you — but you — I’m sure you were enough. That he felt like it was enough.”

She shakes her head again and closes her eyes like there’s something hurting too much to keep them open.

“He told me — he said that it felt like you had always been between us but I didn’t — feel that, I mean. Ever since you woke up I never got to feel like you are fully really here. It’s like I’m still missing you.”  

Great, not he’s crying too. How pathetic he must look now. He wants to skip to the end of it, speed through it, but he can’t, she anchors him in and he can’t move, he has to suffer through, he has to make her confident enough to believe this, them, is a good idea.

“I’m here, Iris! I promise you, whichever way you want me to be.”

“You are not though.”

“Yes, I am!”

“No, you’re in another Earth, and you always have to go cause there’s lives out there that need saving and I don’t get to want you without feeling selfish, and I’m not saying I should but — and then there’s Patty too. You couldn’t wait any longer and you have your own stuff, and you’ve moved on, and you should, I’m not saying you shouldn’t, I just —”

“Iris, no. No. Patty and I…”

“I know you’ve broken up now.”

“You do?”

“She’s told me. She dumped you.”

He vaguely wonders why would Patty tell Iris, in what Earth that is something that would make sense, Patty didn’t even know about Iris, not really, not truly, not fully. He was always extra careful to keep her from figuring it out, but it doesn’t matter.

“Iris, it doesn’t matter. None of it matters cause I’ll never feel about anyone the way I feel about you. Ever. I promise you that much. Nothing feels the same.”

“And you won’t leave?”

“I’ll never leave. For as long as you have me. I won’t leave.”

She doesn’t look convinced. She fidgets around in a way she never does and it’s disconcerting, Iris has always been unshakeable, even when she’s breaking she does it with grace, and now he sees her skirmishing something in herself and it feels like they are both standing on the edge of something. If they don’t step towards it now there won’t be another chance cause it won’t be the same, there’s no taking any of it back. All she’s telling him, he knows her, he knows she won’t open up like that again if he doesn’t do this right.

He takes both of her hands in his and tries to find the right thing to say, tries to fight the need to just tell her it’s all right, and let her cry into him, and stop fighting for it so she can stop hurting. Instead he tells her; 

“When I was — when I was coming home, I — when I’m feeling lost or like I won’t be able to do what I need to do, I think of you, something in you gets me grounded and suddenly I know how to do what I have to do. I don’t know how that’s possible, but the way I feel — how you make me feel — you save me every time. You get me all the time, I promise you, even when I’m not with you, but I’ll do better, I’ll be here and I won’t lie and I’ll always come back home.” 

She smiles, and he’s sure is a real one this time, full of expectations, and he sees his love for her mirroring back at him and he might explode. His heart is beating indescribably fast and he breaths in. There’s nothing rushing them, no tsunami, no lives on danger, not that he knows about anyway, so he can watch her face and enjoy the way her fingers skitter from his hair to his jaw line, lingering on the column of his neck and he folds himself into her, taking pleasure in the way her lips gosht close to his, and the way her breath catches and he can taste her in anticipation. He pulls back a little and her eyes that were already closed flutter open and she’s so beautiful he can’t take it and he doesn’t know exactly why, only that teasing her seems appropriate in the moment, so he asks; 

“Don’t you want blow your nose first? Cause I’ve gotta tell you, on the list of body fluids of yours that I would like to swallow, snot is not really high on it.”

She gives a little laugh and punches him on the shoulder and says;

“Shut up.”

Then she pulls him down, hands warm behind his neck, and he senses her on the tip of her toes so he offers no resistance to the little way he has left to go and she pulls his bottom lip between hers, he lets her take control, and nothing, not even their first first kiss, or the kiss the other Iris gave him, has even felt like this, like pure and simple happiness, like he can feel the Earth shifting into place, and something electric traveling from his lungs to his ears and into her and they are melting together and there, pushing against her, pulling her to him, feeling all of her against all of him, hands sneaking under her fancy shirt, is where he’s meant to be.


End file.
